Roy Bean's Gold (28 page)

S
an Francisco was in an uproar when Captain Love and his bunch returned triumphantly to town. Most local papers clamored with dozens of wild yarns of the supposed end of Joaquín Murieta. In fact the first story to appear in the
Alta California
might have been dictated by the four-flushing Love himself as it made no mention of my lucky shots but rather took credit for his rangers. But I kept my jaw clamped for I didn't need anyone stalking me in revenge.

JOAQUÍN CAPTURED, BEHEADED, AND HIS BODY

IN THE HANDS OF HIS CAPTORS

It has just been learned that the valiant company of Rangers commanded by the redoubtable Captain Harry Love, met the notorious murderer and robber, Joaquín, and his equally infamous band at Panocho Pass, and, after a desperate fight, Joaquín and one of his gang were killed.

The story went on to tell how the bandit's head had been hacked off by Love's rangers and
placed in spirits.

According to Peter Biggs, who hurriedly took time off from his dice table to inspect the grisly souvenir in its place of honor behind the Crystal Palace bar, it was hard to say what the man might have looked like “when he had his haid on.”

I was still puzzled by the dead man's identity. A nagging thought gripped me that I might have killed Francisco Almada, though I refused to believe Rosita's brother would have tried to drygulch me.

Making my way through the jostling, whooping, hard-drinking crowd at the busy Crystal Palace bar, it was plain to see why the management had outbid a dozen other saloons for a chance to display the hideous trophy. When I finally got near enough to view the bruised and battered head floating in its glass jar, the only thing I could be certain of was that the thing had two whole ears. It was
not
Francisco Almada.

I stuck tight as a burr to the Nugget for the next week, helping Briggs and Bender, along with a pair of gamblers I'd hired named Jack White and Ad Pence, keeping myself so busy I'd have little time to think.

At night, however, despite everything, I couldn't get shed of visions of poor old
Don
Hechavaria and what his demented son had done to Josh—and what I'd done to him, in turn. That ghastly head often floated before my eyes, even in the dark.

It was during such dark moments I truly welcomed memories of Dulcima and burned to recall that golden girl's desirable charms. But whenever I thought of Dulcima, Rosita would come crowding into my mind. Where, I wondered, had Red Rosita and her outlaw brother gone?

* * * * *

As the days stretched on into April, I began to think more about those twin peaks the April sun would rise or set between. Odd times found me off in some corner of the saloon, studying the map I had made, and cudgeling my brain over where Jeff Kirker had hidden his outlaw gold.

Then on the evening of April 16th the last piece of the puzzle fell into place. We'd just closed up the Nugget for the night and were having a drink after counting over the take, when Peter Biggs began harping on his favorite subject, lost opportunities. As neither Pence nor White had heard the sad tale of the King of Aig's downfall, I nudged Biggs into retelling the story of his sudden abdication and headlong flight from the miner's wrath at Feather River. While he droned out his tale of woe, I glanced over a current issue of the San Francisco
Herald
that was featuring the serialization of reporter John Rollin Ridge's
Brigand Chief of ­California
, and had just come across the action where my very own brother had been shot down in cold blood by Murieta when ramblings caught my disinterested ear.

“What was that you said about Hully Bullies?”

“Sayed when dem fightin'-mad minuhs tuk an' run me outta camp, through no fault of mine, I wuz so confuse' I mighty nigh come ridin' noath towards them blamed Yeller Bullies!” Bigg's good eye gleamed with recollection. “Ain't wanter go thataway. Real wile Injuns up deh.”

There was little doubt he was speaking of Jeff Kirker's Bullies. I tried to recall Jeff's words:
Found myself a place where not one damned white man had ever set foot. She's all hid there. and she's bully!
But maybe I was mistaken a bit. What Kirker must have said was:
She's all hid there . . . at the Bullies!

It had to be that, for Kirker had traveled over a hundred miles north of the mining country with the stolen gold.

Waiting until Biggs finished his mournful tale and Pence and White had gone home laughing, I sat down with Biggs and Shanghai to learn something few folks knew. There was a small range to the north of the Russian River and east of the Eel River country called the Yolla Bollies. Shanghai, who'd wandered the coasts had heard something of those ranges, adding Yolla Bolla was Yuki Indian for High Snowy Mountains.

At last I had what I needed.

I scratched gravel for the next two days, putting together a traveling kit and picking up a pack mule at the livery. Kirker had used a pair of the beasts, but I thought White Lightning was hefty enough to tote his share.

Then I told the hotel desk clerk I was going off on some prospecting for a couple of weeks and put out the same story at the Golden Nugget. Both Biggs and Bender were all for coming along but I ordered them to tend to their own knitting, and keep an eye on our new gambling team—as well as on each other.

On the very morning I left, April 19th, I received a short note from Dulcima, dated from her hotel over on Montgomery, telling me the company had returned and asking me to call that afternoon.

It was a mighty welcome surprise but I thought I'd soon have an even bigger one for her so had our swamper take an answer back to the Oriental that I'd be away from town for about ten days.

* * * * *

During the first few days of my trip, everything went well. I'd ridden down to visit Josh's grave, then over to take Wednesday's boat across to San Antonio Landing. Without stopping by to see Salazar, I'd struck due northeast for the Sacramento. On the second morning I rode past the forlorn wooden fortifications of Sutter's Mill, where so much gold madness began in 1848. Just two years later, Sutter's farm and deserted holdings were a shambles, with the captain a ruined man. Ferried over the broad reaches of the Sacramento from Sutter's Wharf, I then headed on straight north, leaving the last of the main mining camps.

About the end of the fourth day I began to have the feeling that someone was trailing me, though I'd sighted no dust during the daylight or campfire smoke in the evenings. Shaking it off, I followed the rough map sketched out from Biggs's and Bender's descriptions. Then I veered away to the east on the sixth day with the jagged white wall of the Cascades looming at my back. Now I rode over lush meadows, below the Red Bluffs, where great green prairies with their countless islands of clustered oak spread onward like the sea itself. All was untouched land and as I traveled on eastward, toward the lofting coastal range, that pleasant, virgin country began to take on an odd strangeness. It was as if I entered a land where any white man had seldom, if ever, ventured or was wanted. It was a feeling that I laid to the lonely expanses and the thought of what was awaiting me when I arrived.

If I were the scribbler of some yellow back, such as
The Black Riders of the Congaree
or
The Prisoners of the Aztec
s, I'd have been able to spin a yarn of suffering the most God-awful hardships and bone-chilling dangers on my lonely journey to the Yolla Bollas, but it wouldn't be so. The trip, instead of growing progresssively tougher, was easier than my trek from Mexico to California. There was always ample water in the clear, winding creeks, and more than enough firewood. And I lived high on the hog for I'd fetched along some of the very best supplies.

At last the prairies gave way to rambling foothills and vast hogbacks, and, after breakfast on the eighth day, I struck a dim trail on the edge of a series of foothills. It wound up valleys, through and across cañons, up and down ridges, and along steep slopes. Sometimes the way eastward lay along a bare hillside, but more often it led through open forests where great noble trees shot up on every side. Bay or laurel trees with fragrant foliage, firs, pines, and oaks, all mingled in a scene that changed with every winding of the faint track.

Almost before I knew it, I was right in the midst of the Yolla Bollas, so gradually had the ancient trail risen. Around me swelled a sea of mountains, every blue billow a mountain, with deep, shadowy cañons threading through them. Redwood forests darkened the westward cañons toward the Pacific, while a gray-green carpet of chaparral covered the eastward ridges. Many of the peaks rising before me were very high, some nearly four thousand feet or more.

I sat the broad back of White Lightning, staring around. Where in all those towering peaks, I wondered, were the Twins?

Riding on down, through the fading light, into a small grove of trees, I unsaddled the horse and picketed him, along with the pack mule, on some decent grass near the trees. The sun was slowly dying in a silent storm crimson-gold behind the westward mountains as the eastern skyline became a vague, saw-toothed band of lavender where night drowned the mountain ranges.

While the chill of high places crept on down the dusky slopes, I hustled to make a fire and get my beans and coffee working.

In the morning. . . .

E
very night since I'd been on the trail from San Francisco, I'd slept easy, but when I'd rolled out of my chilly blankets next morning and began to hunt dry firewood, I was striding through a sea of mist. And my memories of the past night were just as hazy as the clinging sheets of fog.

Hunkering over my small chunk of fire, sipping scalding coffee, I saw the mountains in the east looming their giant barriers against the kindling blaze of the coming day.

Then one by one the peaks and humps began to rear up through the glowing mist, and, as I gulped my steaming Arbuckle's, I came nigh dropping the cup for there ahead a pair of noble mountains lofted out of the thinning haze, each rimmed with growing flame. And then the sun, round and fiery as the biggest golden coin in the world, came rolling up to balance, for a blazing instant, between a pair of peaks. Kirker's twin peaks!

Tossing the coffee, I rolled my blankets, stamped out the fire, and rounded up horse and pack mule. By the time I'd finished and swung into the saddle, I saw an entire valley below me that I'd missed on the climb up the plateau, sheltered as it had been by one of the many great ridges.

A half hour riding by an easy trail that threaded around shale and sandstone rocks let us down the thousand feet to the valley floor. Here was an enormous valley stretching mile upon mile to the north and south, and teeming with such game as bear, elk, and deer, all lumbering and loping away at our approach. Birds of every sort, including grouse, quail, and wild pigeon whirled upward in thundering flocks from the magnificent oak groves. But I only had eyes for those two towering peaks eastward.

Another hour fetched me to the base of that pair of snow-mantled peaks and there at the beginning of the first upsurging foothills, where a small, clear stream curved down out of the mountains, I saw a trio of huge granite boulders, just beyond a grove of poplars.

Piling off White Lightning, I tied both animals to some nearby cedars, then pushed my way through the underbrush, splashed across the shallow stream, to stand panting in front of the three boulders.

The central giant bore a lop-sided X, hacked into the surface, but there were also several crude paintings that might have been Indian work. Someone had been at the three rocks, either before or after Jeff Kirker.

I dropped to my knees, clawing the dead grass and brush away from the boulder's base and felt some sort of coarse cloth. Peering down, I saw what looked like at least four gray bags within a deep recess under the boulder.

Flopping upon my belly, I reached slowly into the cavity to tug out a canvas bag marked with a faded
U.S.
Though it weighed nearly a hundred pounds, I staggered up, hugging that clinking sack. Then I scrambled back down to slash one end with my Bowie knife. A glittering rush of rattling, chiming coins spewed out onto the ground. As I sat pawing at the unbelievable treasure, I couldn't help recall the words of Salazar:
Gold can be a blessing. but I think gold will prove a curse. Sí, a curse for many a man in California.
Sitting back on my heels, I stared at the stolen gold, thinking of all the money I was making at the Golden Nugget, especially since the murder of Josh.
What the hell am I doing?
I was thinking to myself just as a flock of birds burst up from some neighboring trees and White Lightning whickered. When I turned to see what might have spooked them, a chunk of the boulder exploded a spray of granite into my face, and the shot ricocheted off into the hills.

But before I could scramble behind the rocks to safety, another shot cracked. Whoever it was, he was mighty damned close.

Kirker's old Tige rifle was out of reach on my saddle, but I had my Navy Colt and fired back at the white smears of gunsmoke curling up from a stand of timber, forty yards down the creek.

That unseen marksman put two more shots close to my head, the balls shrilling off from their shattering impact with the protecting boulders. Then at least four muskets began to slam from the brush-covered slopes above us. For over five minutes the second bunch kept their fire directed at the unknown rifleman in the trees. But after answering back several times, he suddenly quit.

All at once there came the wildcat screech of an Indian war whoop, then another, and four half-naked braves, so near I could see their fancy tattoos, plunged down the grassy slopes, heading straight for that unknown in the timber.

Then a high-powered rifle slammed from higher up the slope. There came the crack from another. And again as both ripped out, one of the running Indians leaped into the air and came down in as neat a somersault as a circus acrobat. But he stayed put, hitting the ground stone dead, while the others veered away into the bushes and vanished.